An efficient void resolution method for geographic routing in wireless sensor networks

Geographic routing is an attractive choice for routing data in wireless sensor networks because of lightweight and scalable characteristics. Most geographic routing approaches combine a greedy forwarding scheme and a void resolution method to detour a void area that has no active sensor. The previous solutions, including the well-known GPSR protocol, commonly use the right-hand rule for void resolution. However, the detour path produced by the right-hand rule is not energy-efficient in many cases. In this paper, we propose a new void resolution method, called void resolution-forwarding, which can overcome voids in the sensor network energy-efficiently. It exploits the quadrant-level right-hand rule to select the next hop for the current node during circumventing a void area. We show by experiments that the proposed method is efficient and scalable with respect to the various voids and network density and that it outperforms the GPSR protocol significantly. (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.